June 22nd – Hyatt Regency Orlando International Airport

Flights were on time yesterday and customs was a breeze in Chicago. We don’t have much nice to say about the O’Hare Airport other than the customs check-in was easy with the Mobile Passport Control App.

I don’t know why every new international terminal is nearly 2 miles from gate to customs, but O’Hare is now in that category – at least they had the moving walkways working. Then it was a challenge to get on one of the trains from Terminal 5 (International) to Terminal 1, where our gate was for our last flight to Orlando. Long lines and some garbled messages about delays on the trains. We felt sorry for those on our train who were 20 minutes away from boarding on their flights – security check-in was another study in inefficiency, with one screening machine in operation and about 7 people standing around looking busy instead of opening another machine/line – there were 3 nonoperating ones next to the operating one. That’s the end of my rant – pretty minor problems in the grand scheme of things on this trip.

At least our last flight was on time and landed even a bit ahead of schedule. We also splurged on the return trip and had business class for the first time on a transcontinental flight – I have finally found a way to sleep on a plane! This may have spoiled us for future long-flight trips. Especially, since both of us got sick right away on the way over after not sleeping well – could be getting older …

Our last flight got in around 10 p.m., so we stayed over with a free night at the Hyatt and will stop at Laura’s parents’ place on our way home later this morning. I won’t go into our woes at check-in, but they ended up taking us another half hour to finally get into our room – seems the hotel was trying to give us an upgrade (we think) but things got garbled in the process.

Time to wrap up this chapter of travel to the end of the earth. It was truly an unforgettable experience!